There's a full-blownpanic going on in Microsoft's core third party developer community. After the big Windows 8 demonstration earlier this month where HTML5 and JavaScript were touted as a new way to create applications for Windows 8, speculation has gone through the roof - with developers panicking in the streets about the end of Silverlight and .NET and a HTML5/JS-only Windows 8 release. Looking more closely at the whole situation, though, it would seem that what we're dealing with here is a miscommunication - one that Microsoft desperately needs to address since the web is blowing it way out of proportion. The tl;dr: no, HTML5 and JS are not going to be the only ways to write applications for Windows 8.

Did anyone seriously think that MS would scrap both Silverlight and .NET overnight? If you actually believe that you deserve to freak out.

Well, if you read the comments from the Microsoft guy in the Silverlight forums, it very much looks like that they're at least dropping development for Silverlight.

Cite:

"As to everything else: You all saw a very small technology demo of Windows 8, and a brief press release. We're all being quiet right now because we can't comment on this. It's not because we don't care, aren't listening, have given up, or are agreeing or disagreeing with you on something. All I can say for now is to please wait until September. If we say more before then, that will be great, but there are no promises (and I'm not aware of any plans) to say more right now. I'm very sorry that there's nothing else to share at the moment. I know that answer is terrible, but it's all that we can say right now. Seriously."

I mean, if there are really absolutely no plans for dropping Silverlight, he could simply say so. But the way he is presenting it does neither support nor weaken the speculation about Silverlight being dropped, but from all the facts presented about Windows 8, indications about Silverlight's death are definitely there and I absolutely understand the SL developers' fears.

So I would be very very careful with the above statement. Mind that Microsoft is a profit-oriented enterprise (don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing that at all), so they have to make certain decisions when they see a technology is not developing as they expected it to be.